A Flight To Remember
by frozenpixie
Summary: Just Ginny and Draco, flying to Hogwarts on broomsticks after missing the train. Banter, bickering and a teeny hint of romance. Pretty funny, slightly cracky, lots of fun. COMPLETE.
1. Of all the people I could have been stuc

**A little something I wrote ages ago and found on my computer randomly. It made me laugh, I hope you enjoy it, too. Four chapters, daily update, please review.**

_For the purposes of this fic, Ginny arrived separately from her family to complete her seventh year at Hogwarts, and Draco is repeating the year since I doubt anyone actually got round to sitting their NEWTs in book 7 what with the whole battle and all. Also no parents are allowed through the barrier hence the empty platform._

-Chapter One – Of all the people I could have been stuck with

Ginny ran up the platform, long red hair blowing across her face and into her slightly open mouth. Running was a difficult feat for the normally athletic girl, because she was carrying a trunk almost as tall and twice as wide as her, had a broomstick strapped across her back, and her pet cat Sneak was clinging for dear life to her shoulder, yowling disparagingly in her ear at the inconvenient jolting motion her owner was creating.

It was no good, though, legging it down the platform with no regards to her dignity or the Statute of Secrecy, with everyone staring at the insane redhead trying to go at fifty miles per hour with a lead-weighted coffin through King's Cross Station, rubbing their eyes as the bizarre spectacle suddenly disappeared with a last fading yowl and flash of red as she bolted through the barrier dividing the magical world from the muggle. It was fruitless. From her panicked half-glance at the clock, she knew she would never make it in time.

Sure enough, as she careered onto the platform, she was just in time to see the last snatch of scarlet and the dispersing tendrils of smoke fade out of sight, leaving nothing but yards of empty track.

"Oh sh-"

WHOOMPH!

As Ginny stood just in front of the barrier, panting and staring in horror at the rapidly diminishing train, a very solid someone crashed into her from behind, sending her and her trunk flying, landing sprawled across the empty platform. Sneak jumped lightly off her shoulder and scampered casually away, totally unruffled by her fall.

"What in the name of seven hells was that?" she cursed, once she found her breath. She struggled to her knees, shoving her trunk off her, and looked around. Behind her was the prone form of a boy, green scarf draped comically over his platinum blond hair.

"Did I miss it?" Draco Malfoy said, looking up in panic. He had not, apparently, noticed that he was in the company of one Ginevra Weasley, or that he had totally knocked said Ginny half way across the conspicuously empty platform.

"Yes, Malfoy," Ginny drawled sourly. "You missed it. You did not, however, miss me. That _hurt, _you moron."

"Oh. Sorry," Draco said casually, not sounding very sorry at all.

A few moments of silence followed, in which the two students straightened their hair and dusted off their clothes.

"I can't help noticing," Draco said a few moments later, eyeing Ginny speculatively. "That you seem to have missed it, too."

"How perceptive of you," she said sarcastically.

"Well, how do you intend to get to Hogwarts?" he demanded. "I take it you don't have an owl?"

"Not unless there's something Sneak has been hiding really well. Like, say, wings," Ginny muttered to herself.

"I beg your pardon?"

"No, Malfoy. I am just as screwed as you are," she said loudly.

"Well don't get your panties in a twist. At least we're both here together."

"Exactly how is that supposed to make me feel better?" Ginny asked incredulously, eyeing Malfoy in a worried manner. He returned the look, his face entertaining the slightest of frowns.

"Oh. Good point."

"I'd say."

"Well, then, Weasley, do you have any smart ideas? Got a flying car handy?"

"Har har. For your information, Malfoy, I have an excellent idea." Ginny sat and crossed her arms, looking smug. Malfoy raised one perfect eyebrow expectantly.

"Well?" he prompted when she did not elaborate.

"You get on your hands and knees and I _ride _you to Hogwarts," Ginny remarked acerbically. "Grow a brain, Malfoy, and work it out. What do we have in common?"

"We both respire?" Draco said. "Other than that, Weasel, you and I have _nothing _in common."

"Hey," Ginny yelped. "Feel the burn. We have lots in common, although it pains me to admit it."

"Such as?" Draco raised both eyebrows, and regarded Ginny with clinical interest.

"We're both magical, we're both purebloods, we're both uncommonly pretty and we both _captain our Quiddich teams."_

"So?" Draco drawled. "Wait, you think I'm pretty?"

"No, I think I'm pretty, I just wanted to get that one in. You could be worse, I suppose." In fact, Ginny thought Draco looked very pretty, with his blond hair a little longer than she had seen it before, and in a tousled heap from his own sprint, and his long, lean legs propping him against the side of the wall. He wasn't going to know that, though.

"Oh, you wish you were as pretty as I am," Draco said, a cocky expression on his face.

"Whatever, Malfoy. At least I'm ten times smarter," Ginny responded, rolling her eyes. "Because I noticed that the final and most important thing we have in common is that we both have freaking great _broomsticks _ tied to our backs." She looked hard at Draco, whose face unclouded with a look of dawning comprehension.

"Nice work, Weasley," he complimented. Ginny raised her eyes in surprise. "I had of course considered the option," he dismissed. Ginny snorted.

"Whatever, Malfoy," she laughed. "You would have sat here til Christmas if I hadn't been here."

Malfoy shot her a scowl, and she smiled sweetly at him. He had to admit, she did look very lovely, radiant smile in place and her silky red hair tumbled across her back and shoulders.

"Shall we, then?" he invited, getting gracefully to his feet and offering her his hand. She took it, eyeing him suspiciously at this show of chivalry.

"Sure," she said cautiously. She unstrapped her broom and performed a hover charm on her trunk so that she could secure it to her broom without weighing it down. As she coaxed Sneak back into her arms she noticed Draco follow her example.

"What're you going to do with the cat?" he asked.

"Put her on my head to keep my ears warm," Ginny said sarcastically. Draco gave her a funny look, as if he couldn't work out if she was joking or not.

"I have a rucksack," he offered. "You can put her in there if you like, she'll be fine on top."

"...Thanks," Ginny said, considering the option. "That'd be really useful."

"Do I get to have a brain, too, then?" he asked hopefully, a glint of mischief in his eyes. Ginny looked at him appraisingly.

"Maybe half of one," she conceded, wiping the smirk off his face. "Let's get on with this, then, shall we?" Draco nodded, wondering why he was engaging with the girl whose family he had spent the last seven years tormenting. Oh well, anything to make the time pass more swiftly.

"To Hogwarts," he said, rather superfluously, pointing to an unspecified spot in the distance. Beside him, he heard Ginny sigh.

"Of all the people I could have been stuck with..."


	2. If rocks had a sense of direction, it wo

-Chapter Two- If rocks had a sense of direction, it would be better than yours

They rose into the air, following the track of the train, which was invisible to muggle eyes, until they were well out of city limits and the scenery was becoming much more rural, with only the occasional farm or hamlet tossed in for good measure.

"You know," Malfoy hollered to Ginny above the wind, which was rising, and making her hands numb on the handle. "The Hogwarts Express takes a circuitous route so as to avoid all the main settlements in Britain it might otherwise pass through."

"How nice," Ginny replied. "I never know you were such a trivia geek, Malfoy, but in the future, please keep it to those who care."

"I mean, Miss I-Have-A-Whole-Brain, that we are taking the long route, and I don't know about you, but I'm freezing. We need to shortcut."

"Shortcut?" Ginny repeated sceptically. "I don't know about you, Malfoy, but I had better things to do on the train than to map out the exact optimal route to Hogwarts. We'd get lost."

"Don't you trust me?" Draco asked.

"NO!"

"Oh...fair enough, actually. Still, I know what I'm doing. Anyway, we can always use the four-point spell."

"Hogwarts is _un-plot-ta-ble," _Ginny said slowly, staring at Draco in horror. "Honestly, even I know that and I suck at knowledge."

"Just follow me, will you?" Draco said impatiently, and swerved his broomstick to the right so that he was travelling north rather than west. "Or not, your choice, personally I think you'd make a very fetching human popsicle."

Cursing under her breath, Ginny matched Draco's direction, flying a little behind him so that she could blame him when they got completely and utterly lost. Sure enough, over an hour later, Draco was looking slightly worried and kept glancing underneath him.

"Lost, are you, Draco?" she asked pointedly, raising one silky russet eyebrow. Her hands were red and stiff, and her back was beginning to ache.

"Not lost, just...uncertain," he corrected. "I think we should put down for a few moments, we're just coming into the outskirts of a city, we can see where we are from there."

"How does that help us?"

"Well Hogwarts is in Scotland, right? So by my reckoning we should be about over Nottingham by now. We check our coordinates, and, uh, keep on going. Possibly after a pint and a sandwich at the nearest pub."

"Well ok then," Ginny agreed, the lure of food and a hot drink sounding very attractive right now. "We'll have to disillusion ourselves going down, though."

They made a downwards spiral, finally landing in a small alley leading onto a main street. Rubbing their hands together and stowing away their wands, hiding their still disillusioned trunks and brooms so that they did not have to drag them around, they stepped out onto the main street, where they unanimously made for the closest pub.

"Two pints of bitter and two club sandwiches, please," Draco asked the innkeeper. He bustled off to get their orders, and Draco leaned across to Ginny.

"Hey, do you have any muggle money?"

"No,"

"Me neither."

"Oops." They stared at each other for a few seconds. Then, Draco picked up a cardboard beer mat.

"Percuniaverto mugglum," he muttered, and the mat turned into a perfect replica of a twenty pound note*.

"Good thinking," Ginny said fervently, as Draco casually handed over the note as the barman came back with their drinks and food.

"So how exactly do we find out where we are without looking like total morons?" Ginny whispered to Draco as he started eating his sandwich in a manner far more reminiscent of a starved Ron than the cultured Slytherin princeling.

"I'm the genius who bought us food with a beer mat," Draco mumbled around a mouth of cheese and ham. "You can do the rest."

"I'm the genius who thought of the broom idea, and you're the moron who landed us in a completely unknown location," hissed Ginny, keeping her voice down so as not to arouse the curiosity of the surrounding muggles. "You lost us, it's your job to find us again."

"Fine," Draco said dramatically, setting down his pint glass and leaning away from the table to touch the shoulder of a man sitting at the next table.

"Excuse me, sir, but could I ask you to confirm where we are? My girlfriend is insisting we're in Manchester and she won't listen to me." Draco gave the scowling Ginny a smug look, and waited for the man to answer. He was giving Draco a very funny look.

"We are in Manchester, dude," he said in a slightly worried voice. "Where did you think we were?" Ginny began to laugh, sniggering at the dumb look on her companion's face.

"It's not funny," Draco insisted.

"Yes it is. You were at least fifty miles off," she giggled.

"Well on the plus side we are closer than we thought," Draco said defensively.

"From now on, directions are up to me, ok?" Ginny said decisively. "We can do a four-point to the Hogwarts Express once we reach the Scottish border and follow the track north from there."

"Fine," Draco sighed theatrically. "We'll take the long way around. We'd probably still be in Coventry if it weren't for me, but have it your way."

"You're not honestly trying to defend your sense of direction, are you, Malfoy?" Ginny asked incredulously, swallowing the last of her sandwich.

"Well? We're going in the right general direction, aren't we?" Draco pointed out. Ginny rolled her eyes, and leant forward on her elbows, looking Draco straight in the eye with the air of one about to impart some great wisdom.

"Malfoy, if rocks had a sense of direction, it would be better than yours."

* * *

*I do not speak Latin, this is almost definitely totally wrong, but meh.


	3. Can you stop singing, it's making me sea

-Chapter Three- Can you stop singing, it's making me seasick

Warmed up, well fed and back in the air headed in the right direction, Draco and Ginny were both in a much better humour than they had been when they started out. Unfortunately for Draco, this meant Ginny felt the need to keep up an incessant stream of chatter, half to herself and half, to his irritation and slight amusement, to him.

"...so when Ron got back on the broom, the idiot didn't realise Fred and George had put a bucking jinx and a sticking charm on it, so he was basically getting thrown around the yard like a kneazle which has just bitten a hippogriff in the arse," Ginny babbled. Draco could not quite suppress his grin at the image of the redheaded Gryffindor clinging fruitlessly to the bucking broomstick.

"And then there was that one time when I stole Charlie's broom, before they'd let me play with them, and I accidentally crashed it into a tree and bent all the twigs up, and I told him the twins had done it. He got so mad at them, because he was captain of the Quiddich team and he said everyone would laugh at him for having a battered up broomstick. I did feel a bit guilty when he started clobbering them over the head with it..." Ginny gazed into the sky with a dreamy expression on her face.

"Should I expect a running commentary on the many idiocies of your brothers the entire way?" asked Draco impatiently, concealing the fact that he was actually sort of enjoying the random exploits she was relating to him.

"Well excuse me if I want to pass the time in something other than dour silence," Ginny retorted, looking a little peeved. "If you have a more fascinating subject at hand, don't hesitate to inform me."

"Anything that doesn't involve a broomstick and a bunch of redheads would suffice," Draco jibed.

"How about a white-haired ferret and a certain Dark Arts professor?" Ginny offered mischievously.

"Or redheads, we could go with redheads," Draco amended quickly, and Ginny smirked evilly.

"I thought so. So there was this one time when I was seven and George-"

"You know what, Ginny, if you're so good on a broomstick why don't you prove it?" Draco cut across her. Ginny looked at him, surprised by the challenge.

"What about our trunks?"

"It won't make any difference when they're weightless. Come on, I've never gone one-on-one with you in a game. Race me."

"All right. You're on." Before Draco could specify any further, Ginny zoomed ahead of him, diving downwards and crouching low to the handle of her broom. Within a few seconds, Draco was beside her.

"You cheated," he accused, pulling across so that her was inches from her.

"Do to others first what they are thinking about doing to you," Ginny retorted, and, with a smirk, she curved underneath him and put on another burst of speed.

To anyone underneath them, if they happened to be looking up and had the ability to see through clouds, the two students would have looked like two graceful swallows (with bulky luggage) ducking and interweaving in joyful flight. To them, though, the competition was heating up, and they both wore identical frowns of concentration as they tried to outdo the other. It was Ginny who spotted first the break in the clouds, and made for it, hoping to confuse Draco into slowing by making a sudden disappearance.

Instead, though, as they reached the gap in the clouds side by side, the gap widened and sunlight broke through onto the suddenly illuminated ruins of a castle below, alone on a wild moorland, glistening off a still, ghostly calm lake, which had been invisible to them only moments before. It was so beautiful and so sudden that both of them pulled up short, gasping.

"Where are we?" Ginny asked in wonder.

"It looks like we've crossed into a fairytale," Draco replied, voice hushed with awe. Ginny gave him a sideways glance and giggled. Spell broken, Draco gave her an annoyed look.

"What?" he asked.

"You just sounded so gay just then," she snorted.

"Oh, shut up. Like only girls can say stuff is pretty," Draco snarled back.

"It was just the way you said- oh, never mind," Ginny gave up. "It is beautiful," she admitted. Still not looking as if he entirely forgave her, Draco turned his own gaze back to the view. Both of them, unasked, dove low, sweeping into the picture before them, until they were just inches over the sparkling water. As Draco leaned down to trail his hand through the surface of the lake, causing large, shimmering ripples to spread over the calm water, and sparkling droplets lit with every colour of the rainbow to play out from his touch, the sunlight faded and the world once again became regular and unremarkable, though still very pretty. The two teenagers looked at each other, their enchantment fading and reality returning. Ginny noticed the excited sparkle in Draco's slate-grey eyes, and Draco took in the flush of colour which had spread prettily across Ginny's cheekbones.

"We'd better do the point-me spell," Ginny said heavily after a few moments, turning her own intent gaze from Draco's matching one. "See where the train's got to." Draco got out his wand and murmured a few words.

"East," he told her. "Not far, only a few miles at the most." They rose a little higher in the air and made their way in the direction of the train. In just a few minutes they spied it underneath them, a scarlet snake winding its way through the Scottish moors.

"Who's a genius," gloated Ginny.

"I did the spell," Draco whined.

"I saw the train first."

"No, I saw it first."

"Maybe we saw it at the same time. I said it first."

"Whatever. We rule, anyway. This was a great idea."

"Apart from the cold. And the sore arse. And the irritating companion."

"Hey," Draco yelped. "You're the one who keeps babbling. And mocking me. And..."

"If that's it, I'm really off my game," Ginny smirked. "Maybe I can throw in a bat bogey hex, or – ooh, I know." Her face lit up with a flash of enlightenment, which was swiftly replaced with the purest look of true evil Draco had ever seen."

"Oh no," he said, looking worried. "What now?" Ginny gave him a wide smile, and began to sing, her voice raised cheerfully over the wind.

"A whole new woooorld,"

"Oh gods, please no," Draco begged.

"A new fantaaaastic pooooint of viiiewwww,"

"I'll do anything." Ginny smirked, mischief glittering in her eyes, and began swaying on her broomstick, weaving around the horror-struck Draco in time with the lyrics.

"I can oooopen your eyyyyyes, take you woooonder by woooooonder, over sideways and uuunder, on a maaaagic caaaarpet riiide," she crooned wickedly.

Draco took one hand off his broom to cover his face.

"Ginny, please can you stop singing? It's making me seasick."


	4. Next time, let's make the cat grow wings

-Chapter 4- Next time, let's make the cat grow wings

Unfortunately, just because they had found the train, didn't mean the rest of their journey was anything less than painful, inconvenient and thoroughly nerve-wracking. After Draco had aimed a particularly fervently felt hex at her, Ginny had subsided into sulky silence. At first this seemed like heaven to Draco, but the redhead's lack of enthusiastic chatter allowed him to notice the growing chill, the increasing discomfort in his rear end and the constant danger of a runny nose. A Malfoy's nose never ran. It was unseemly. Unfortunately, a Malfoy would also never be caught dead sniffing, so he was left with the problem of manoeuvring a handkerchief whilst steering his broom, causing him to almost slip forwards off the handle multiple times, which succeeded in lightening Ginny's morose temper, but did nothing for his efforts to remain dignified.

"You know, Malfoy, I have no idea why you're captain of the Slytherin team," Ginny mocked the third time it happened. "I mean, I know men have difficulty multitasking, but flying one-handed isn't really much more demanding than walking and talking at the same time, and even Crabbe and Goyle can manage that. Actually, come to think of it, I'm not sure they can..." Ginny frowned, trying to remember a time when she had seen the two goons make this valiant foray into the world of multitasking. Draco frowned into the darkness and tried to think up a retort scathing enough. Ahh yes, that was it.

"Shut up, Weasley." It was a classic. Ginny didn't seem to think so, from the look of scepticism etched across her face. Some people had no finesse. Oh, well, he could always educate her in the art of finesse.

"Are we there yet?" he asked plaintively. Ginny shot him a look.

"Shut up, Malfoy," she snapped. He smirked. It was a classic, after all.

"Are we there yet?" he asked five seconds later. Ginny huffed a loud sigh.

"No, Malfoy."

"Are we there yet?" a few seconds later.

"Did I tell you about my bat bogey hex?"

"..."

Ginny smirked. A few minutes later, however...

"Are we-"

"_I'll tell you when we're there, Malfoy!"_

Malofy's grin of smug satisfaction stretched from one ear to the other in the darkness. That would teach her to insult him. He thought the creaking complaints of his muscles had lessened just a little bit. Teasing Ginevra Weasley was obviously good for his health.

His grin had faded by the time they actually had reached Hogwarts. It had started to drizzle lightly and his usually flawless hair was both windswept and plastered to his skull. His only consolations were that it was dark, and that beside him Weasley resembled a bedraggled kitten. A faint yowl from Sneak told him that someone else was distinctly fed up with the journey, too.

"I can see the castle," Ginny exclaimed in the middle of Draco's moody reflections on the warmth of the fire waiting for him in the common room. He squinted downwards and recognised the faint silhouette of the castle.

"Oh thank Merlin," he sighed in relief. "Ten more minutes of this and I'd have to hang myself from my own broomstick with my shoelaces." Ginny shot him a dirty look but refrained from commenting. They dove downwards with a little less grace than was their wont; nine hours on a length of hard wood can do that to a person.

"Ow." This was the first noise Draco uttered when he peeled himself off his broomstick. Ginny landed just a few inches away from him.

"Ow," she agreed fervently, massaging the crick in her neck.

"My feet are freezing, my nose is running, my legs and back are aching and frankly I can't even feel my ass," stated Draco, running a mental inventory of his body.

"A little too much information, Draco," Ginny remarked dryly. He poked his tongue out at her, but she didn't notice in the darkness, or at least pretended not to.

"Ohh, shoot. Not good," she said, and the tone of her voice made Draco spin round to look in the direction she indicated. McGonogall, looking very miffed and carrying a tartan umbrella, was striding torwards where they were standing, huddled together, clutching broomsticks and a bedraggled cat and rubbing various body parts. In fact, it occurred to them both at the same time that their proximity looked vaguely as if it could give people the wrong idea, particularly given their stiff movements. They sprang apart.

"Just what do the two of you think you are doing?" she demanded uncompromisingly as she neared them. They both looked extremely guilty.

"You see, Professor-"

"It was like this-"

They both broke off, glaring at each other as their voices mingled, making their explanations incomprehensible. McGonogall sniffed.

"I am aware that you are both Quiddich captains this year, but riding your brooms to Hogwarts was foolhardy in the extreme."

"Tell me about it," Ginny muttered quietly.

"It was your idea," Draco reproached her.

"Well what was your plan, then?" Ginny countered. "It's not like either of us had an owl."

"Yeah, well I was the one who managed to get us here in one piece."

"That's so untrue. We would have ended up in Africa if it wasn't for-"

"Silence," McGonogall bellowed. They both started. They had forgotten about the strict professor in their bickering. "It is disgraceful enough that two mature students missed the train in the first place. To bicker like four year olds in my presence when you should be explaining yourselves is inexcusable."

"She started- I mean, sorry, professor," Draco said hurriedly, catching her eye.

"Sorry," Ginny echoed mutinously.

"You will both receive detention, _together, _to atone for your indiscretions and to improve your relationship to each other, which it seems has not benefitted from today's escapade," McGonogall decided. They both scowled at each other. Draco thought how adorable she looked when she was mad. Ginny thought how cute he was when he was being childish. Both of them hastily set their faces in the appropriate expressions of outrage as their punishment was meted out. More time to torment each other? For somebody so astute, McGonogall was not very bright sometimes.

They followed behind her as she made towards the castle, and McGonogall smiled to herself as she caught Ginny's final quip to the Slytherin boy.

"Next time, Malfoy, let's make the cat grow wings."


End file.
